Interviews

Gabriel from the band Changüí Majadero talks about traditional Cuban Music

Latin America is the birthplace of so many different musical genres that a lot of us could never even know them all. Although salsa is our main focus, there are many Latin genres that also deserve our full attention and, in this writing, we are going to talk about one of them: the changüí. That is why we interviewed one of its main exponents: Gabriel García, leader and founder of the band Changüí Majadero.

Gabriel García from Changüí Majadero playing — Gabriel García playing his Cuban tres

Gabriel’s beginnings in music

Gabriel started relating a little of his history with music. Something interesting to say about this artist is that his beginnings in music did not take place as a child like many others, but when he was about 19 years old.

Before being a musician, Gabriel was an amateur boxer since he was a child and, thanks to his dedication, he went on to win Gold Gloves and was part of sport organizations in his native Mexico. The sport was the center of his life until a school friend of his lent him a guitar and taught him how to play along some chords. This was the beginning of his interest in music.

Apart from this, he learned that his grandmother was an opera singer in her youth, which increased his desire to start experimenting with music and focused entirely on it, to the point that he applied the same discipline as with boxing at the time.

Gabriel then decided it was time to be academically trained in what would become his new passion, so he took a degree in jazz and a subsequent master’s degree in Afro-Latin music. This is interesting because he did not grow up with these genres and had not heard them before, so studying them was something new for the artist. And of course, he did not know changüí either.

Gabriel García from Changüí Majadero smoking — Gabriel García smoking a Cuban cigar

The Cuban Tres

Let us remember that Gabriel was a guitarist and jazz player and his initial training was based on this, but that changed as he got to know Cuban rhythms and salsa itself. Something that caught his attention is that salsa hardly ever uses the guitar, until one day he heard a son montuno record with something very similar to a guitar, but it was not one. It was a Cuban tres.

When he realized that the tres was the root of all this type of music, he set himself to learning to play it and bought one. To help himself, he began listening to artists and groups such as Buena Vista Social Club and the famous tres player Pancho Amat, who was the one Gabriel became interested in the Cuban tres for.

Then, a friend told him that, if he wanted to know the roots of this instrument, he had to study changüí. The problem was that, at that time, there was very little information about this genre, so it became much more difficult for him to learn about it. The only thing he had was a record by the most famous changüí group, whose name was Changüí Majadero.

There was so little Gabriel could know about changüí that he met Cubans born and raised outside Guantánamo who did not know it, since it came from very rural areas. For the same reason, changüí was unable to reach the big cities like Havana, where most foreign tourists went.

Given that there was only little information available on changüí, Gabriel chose to do part of his master’s degree in Guantánamo and that is when he finally got to know this genre for real. He also had the opportunity to make friends with changüí teachers, who helped him a lot to understand it, including the founder of the group Changüí Guantánamo.

Changüí Majadero

After returning to Los Angeles with all the information he collected in Guantánamo, he began recording videos for YouTube playing the original changüí and its typical instruments. Alfredo Ortiz, a very popular salsa percussionist in Los Angeles and member of the orchestra Son Mayor, saw these videos and immediately contacted Gabriel to invite him to play with his group. Subsequently, they all decided to form a new group based on this not so well known genre.

Gabriel explains that he and the other members decided to call the group ChangüÍ Majadero because it was relegated to being heard only by poor farmers in Cuba, so the wealthy people from the big cities referred to ChangüÍ in a derogatory sense as ”música majadera” (music for uneducated and poor people).

The guantanameros who played changüÍ started using the word ”majadero” in their lyrics, but to refer to how proud they were about their roots and this genre. This fact made Gabriel and the other musicians choose to use ”changüí majadero” as the name for their group.

Fortunately, this situation has changed over time thanks to those who have been interested in making changüí known to the rest of Cuba and the world. After many years of work, it has become much more popular and well respected compared to other times, but it is still not enough. In the words of Gabriel, it is necessary to pursue efforts to make this traditional and folkloric genre more relevant every day.

Arranger, composer and pianist Carlos Ordiano

Carlos Ordiano is a talented arranger, pianist and composer who has given us the honor of talking to us and telling us a bit about his career.

Carlos was born in Southern California and was raised in a family of Latino parents who have always loved the music of their roots, which led the artist to be continuously exposed to these rhythms from an early age.

With a consolidated career, his specialty is Latin jazz piano and he has a long list of collaborations with big names in the California music industry.

This is arranger, composer and pianist Carlos Ordiano

Carlos’ beginnings in music

After thanking the invitation to this interview, Carlos told us a little bit about how his interest in music began since he was a child. He told us that no one in his family was engaged in music professionally, but one day an uncle of his gave him a toy piano when he was five years old.

He loved the gift so much he told his father he wanted to devote himself to music as a young child, which led him to hire a piano instructor for his son so that he could learn to play the instrument as soon as possible. The problem was that the child only learned by watching his instructor’s hands, so he never learned to read music. The day came when the teacher gave up and told Carlos’ father to find someone else, since he could do nothing for the boy.

After that disappointment, Carlos stopped playing for a year until he resumed his interest in music and again took piano lessons, obtaining much better results than the last time.

During his learning process, he played a little bit bass and trumpet, but no instrument ever became as important as the piano.

His brothers Ruben and Oscar were also taking music lessons in parallel and decided to follow the path of music like Carlos. Ruben is a bass player and Oscar is a guitarist.

When he was 19, he went to study recording engineering at Golden West College, but he found this career very boring, so he decided to learn to read and compose music, since he did not have much experience with these areas yet. This is how he started playing in a Latin jazz band in which he learned a lot more about music in general and got a lot of support from the band leader and, of course, from his parents.

Carlos Ordiano on stage — Carlos Ordiano performing live on stage

Groups

Carlos has participated in several groups from various genres and the first one was formed by him and his uncles when he was a child. The music they made consisted of cumbias and rancheras back then.

When he arrived at school, he began to focus his attention on Latin jazz, salsa, son montuno and other Latin genres, which led him to participate in groups based on these rhythms. In fact, he also began to be a replacement in several salsa groups when a member was missing. This is how he gained the experience he needed to work with other artists and orchestras in different areas.

Such is the case of the jazz-funk group Modern Time, with which he plays in a small Californian club every Wednesday and Sunday. From time to time, he also plays with his brother Rubén in Santa Ana and, on these occasions, they call themselves The Ordiano Brothers.

Another important group he became involved with was La Santa Cecilia. La Marisoul, their lead singer, had a big band project and wanted his friend Carlos to arrange some of their new songs, which gave a unique touch to the chords of each piece of music.

Carlos Ordiano and La Marisoul — La Marisoul from La Santa Cecilia performing with Carlos Ordiano

Santa Ana Community College

As for his time at Santa Ana Community College, Carlos confesses that he was not a very good student, since he had no interest in subjects such as English or mathematics. He was only interested in music and that is what he focused all his attention on. This caused him to take a long time to graduate and obtain the academic degree he was opting for.

After searching many institutes, he finally obtained a scholarship at Cal State Long Beach College thanks to which he studied things like orchestration for big bands and small groups. During his studies at this school, he only had to pay for parking and textbooks he needed. His stay at this school helped him create many important connections in the industry until finally graduating in 2010 and earning his bachelor’s degree in jazz piano.

To clinch the matter, Carlos has pointed out that the academic part is important to have more specialized vocabulary in music and build links with other colleagues, but at the end of the day, this is not necessary for a musician to be good. In fact, he said that many of the musicians he most admires do not have any formal academic training, so it is not strictly necessary to have a university degree in that field.

El Tresero Moderno San Miguel Perez

Cuba is and will continue to be one of the main cradles of the best artists in Latin America and San Miguel Perez is one of those cases. The producer, composer and singer gave us an exclusive interview to talk about his musical beginnings, his history and what he is currently working on. Don’t miss it!

Tresero San Miguel — This is San Miguel Perez, ”El Tresero Moderno”

San Miguel, El Tresero Moderno

San Miguel is known in his country as ”El Tresero Moderno” (the modern tres player in English) due to the styles he uses when playing. He chose the Cuban tres as his main instrument because it is a very important icon in the music of his country and the one that most represents Cuba internationally,

His first contact with music occurred at the age of 10, when he began studying classical music, but adding the Cuban tres. He followed this same path throughout high school and university until he became part of some Cuban popular music groups such as Los Jóvenes Clásicos del Son and Adalberto Álvarez y Su Son.

Together with the latter group, he released the album ”Respeto Para Los Mayores”, which was very popular at the time. This success led them to collaborate with great orchestras such as Los Van Van, with whom they shared the stage sometimes.

On one occasion, one of the members of Los Van Van took the stage to jam with the guys of Adalberto Alvarez y Su Son, including San Miguel. Seeing the Cuban’s talent and style with the tres, he baptized him with the nickname ”El Tresero Moderno”. This nickname had to do with his playing and the influences that the artist brings to the instrument when making a solo.

San Miguel playing — San Miguel Perez playing the Cuban tres live

Cubadisco

San Miguel was twice awarded with the Cubadisco Award, one in 2011 in the category of Best Tresero and the other in 2013 in the category of Best Traditional Cuban Music. These recognitions were very important for the musician, as the award was the result of a previous contest, which was focused on the work of treseros, singers and pianists from all over Cuba.

The primary objective of this contest was to rescue Cuban music and give new talents a chance to make their art known. Adalberto Álvarez, Frank Fernández, and Mayito de Rivera were part of the contest’s presidency.

Given that San Miguel was one of the winning treseros, the Bis Music label released an album called ”Treseros de Cuba”, material in which the young man was included. This was the album which won the Cubadisco award in 2014.

After receiving both awards, Adalberto Álvarez met up with San Miguel to invite the Cubadisco winner to join his group. He took advantage of the departure of the former tresero in the group to invite him.

Los Angeles

San Miguel’s move to Los Angeles was due to a purely professional issue at first. He went to play with Adalberto Alvarez, Peruvian-American singer Cecilia Noël, her husband Colin Hay from Men At Work and other artists living in the United States. Due to this and other work proposals, he decided to stay in Tampa and, time later, to move to the city of Los Angeles and make it his permanent residence.

It should also be mentioned that many other artists have had to work other jobs outside of music in order to make ends meet, but fortunately this was not the case of San Miguel, who had the opportunity to work only in music and did not need to resort to other activities out of his passion. He has dedicated himself fully to playing, recording and producing music for the past 10 years.

San Miguel won the Cubadisco Award — San Miguel twice won the Cubadisco Award in his native country

Composition, production and singing

Regarding the areas of music in which he has specialized, San Miguel began by explaining that he made a good improvement in composition during the time he played with Los Jóvenes Clásicos del Son. He also learned to make arrangements based on traditional music, something in which the director of the group, Ernesto Reyes Palma, played a very important role.

Regarding production, the artist did not participate much in that area, but he eventually did in the United States. It is in this country that he officially started his career as a soloist, tresero and artist. Three years after arriving in Los Angeles, he produced a first album called ”Un Poquito de Amor” in collaboration with Cecilia Noël and Colin Hay in 2017, which was a great learning experience for him, as he was able to experiment and mix many seemingly disparate rhythms.

Other areas in which San Miguel would like to specialize are sound engineering and remastering, but he is working hard to do so.

Current projects

As for the current projects, he is currently promoting his single ”Besito Bon Bon”, which is the main song of his new album. In fact, San Miguel and his team are planning to give this same name to the whole album. On this occasion, he mixed electronic sounds with traditional Cuban music to give a much more modern rhythm to the traditional genres coming from the island. The album has nine songs, is produced by Jay Carona and contains some collaborations with Cecilia Noël.

Large projects of Mexican pianist and composer Irving Flores

It is always a pleasure for us to talk with important figures from the Latin music industry in the United States and today it was the turn of the incredibly talented producer, arranger, composer and pianist Irving Flores, who has been kind enough to connect via Zoom and talk a little about his career and personal life.

After the usual greetings and introductions, Irving started talking about what inspired him to get started in music which, in his case, was his father.

Pianist Irving Flores — Mexican producer, arranger, composer and pianist Irving Flores

Irving’s father as a source of inspiration

Irving’s first important contact with music was his father, who was a professional saxophonist in the 60’s and even worked for a big band in Tamaulipas, Mexico, the artist’s native country.

He was his first musical maestro and the one who helped him take his first steps in this complicated world, to the extent that Irving also started playing the saxophone encouraged by his father. The young man always wanted to learn how to play piano, but the high level of salinity in the city of Tampico damaged this type of instruments. It is then that he chose the organ which, being electronic, withstood the weather conditions, but he never discarded the instrument he was most passionate about.

Once he began his career as an orchestrator and arranger, he was exploring all wind instruments such as the saxophone, trumpet, and trombone and string instruments such as the guitar. He played the saxophone professionally for some years, studied at the National Conservatory of Music and received private music lessons to strengthen his knowledge.

Roles as a producer, an arranger and a composer

So, as was the case with many other Latin musicians, Irving perceived music as a job in which experience has been much more important than the academic part. In fact, he told us that, as a child, he saw his father sitting writing music and making arrangements, which led him to imitate him and do the same.

When he has beraly 15, he was perfectly capable of arranging at a professional level, an experience that served him well in Mexico City when dealing with the best composers of his native country, such as Luis Demetrio, Vicente Garrido, Eugenia León and maestro Armando Manzanero. He was also Paulina Rubio’s musical director for many years.

For years, Irving spent three or four days each week in a studio, which gave him the necessary experience to prepare for what was to come in his professional future.

Irving worked with many figures — Irving has worked with many important figures in the music industry

San Diego

Irving married a U.S. citizen and had a daughter with her, which made it much easier for him to get a visa to travel to the United States. After he split up with his wife, he specifically chose the city of San Diego because his daughter lives here and he wanted to see her grow up.

Although that was the primary reason for his move there, he immediately noticed that there was much scope for him to work on his own stuff and make many contacts. One of them was Dave Scott, thanks to whom he was able to write music for the San Diego Symphony Orchestra.

The artist assures that, regardless of the place he used to live, he never lost his way and never stopped learning everything he could about music.

One of the greatest experiences he had in this city had to do with taking the place of Oscar Hernandez in the Spanish Harlem Orchestra. It turns out that Hernandez lost his luggage and passport on a flight, so someone had to take his place in the concert the band would have the next day in Mexico City. It was then that Gilbert Castellanos recommended Irving for this task.

Hernandez and Irving met, each one put their terms and reached an agreement. The founder of the orchestra bought the artist a plane ticket and went to assume the role of pianist that Hernandez could not take that night and the result could not be better. Since then, Irving and the orchestra has been on excellent terms and both he and the world famous pianist became good friends.

Irving and his piano — Irving next to his greatest passion, his piano

Working for great artists

According to Irving, one advantage Latin musicians have is that they are able to play all styles of music, which gives them a greater range of action compared to other artists. We are also influenced by Latin music, Afro-Antillean music and Afro-Cuban music. These elements help us a lot to do our job. American musicians tupically specialize in a single context or genre, but Latinos don’t have those limitations,” Irving said on the subject.

Although the pianist specializes in makings arrangements for jazz, the above mentioned shows that he is perfectly capable of entering any other genre, which has led him to work with great artists with many styles.

One of the most interesting cases was Luis Miguel. One of his most important producers, Alejandro Carvallo, spent some time in Los Angeles, where he and Irving met and forged a friendship. That is how he started writing arrangements for ”El Sol de Mexico” and had a very good experience working for him and his team.

In the case of the San Diego Chamber Orchestra, a composer working for the institution (and Irving’s friend) named Dave Scott needed an urgent arrangement at that time, but they did not have the budget for the relevant work. So, he asked Irving what they could do, to which he replied that he needed a few days to write a new arrangement. The following two weeks, the pianist had no time even to sleep, but he achieved the goal and wrote ”A Tribute to Frank Sinatra”. According to Irving himself, this has been one of the most important projects he has had in his entire career.

Irving worked with Luis Miguel — Irving worked with many talented Mexican artists such as Luis Miguel and Paulina Rubio

American Citizen

In the year 2021, Irving became an American citizen, which is certainly a great honor for anyone who lives in that country and also a great responsibility. The artist seems to know this very well.

When we asked Irving about this topic, his answer was not so much based on the artistic aspect, but on everything that involves the acquisition of citizenship as a Latino. In this sense, the artist emphasized that the cultural and even judicial environment in which we grew up in most of our countries are completely different from those of the United States, so adapting to this country is a real challenge, but well worth it.

In his case, the pianist also says that he was as disciplined as possible in each of his decisions to be able to get to the point where he is now. In that sense, he has always done his best to exercise his career as a musician with excellence, but always respecting U.S. laws at all times. He said this because he knows many talented people who were unfortunately imprisoned or deported for making mistakes in this regard.

On the same subject, he also said that it is very important to follow the rules for American society to accept you as a member and give you all the opportunities you are given as a citizen with all the letters.

Musically speaking, having a U.S. passport has provided him with the possibility to travel and tour anywhere in the world without any problem, which is extremely important for the growth of an artist’s career.

Tracy Jenkins from Lula World Records spoke exclusively with us

There are many Latin artists residing in Canada who have gone to the North American country to seek opportunities in music and, little by little, they have found them thanks to people like Tracy Jenkins and her label Lula World Records.

Tracy Jenkins, with whom we had the opportunity to talk a few days ago, is one of the co-founders of Lula World Records, part of the Lula Lounge nightclub team and an artist manager.

We found it very interesting to discover a record label belonging to a project focused on managing artists who make Latin music, which is a great opportunity to further promote our culture and genres that have been disseminated throughout the world in recent years.

Tracy has done an immeasurable work to guide and make known soloists and groups from all over Latin America and we want to recognize her great work with the most important details of the conversation we had with her.

Tracy Jenkins from Lula — Tracy Jenkins, co-founder of Lula World Records

Lula World Records

When we wanted to know a little about the context of creating Lula World Records, Tracy told us that this was a project born from the vibrant Latin music scene at the Lula Lounge club, which has 21 years of operation in the city of Toronto.

During this time, the venue has established itself as one of the best places to enjoy live Latin music throughout the city of Toronto and Canada in general. Attendees can usually enjoy live singers, orchestras and DJs on Fridays and Saturdays, although there can be more days.

Currently, it is the only place in Canada that offers a total of 12 salsa orchestras and each one has its own sound and repertoire. It is the club that gave rise to what would later become known as Lula World Recodrs, which was born as a means to share the best quality salsa music produced in Toronto with a much more global audience.

The first official release of the project took place in 2012, but in the form of a musical complication under the name ”Lula Lounge Essential Tracks”, including the best tracks from artists such as Roberto Linares Brown, Yani Borrell, The Puentes Brothers and many other important names in the Canadian music industry.

Tracy says that, from that moment, they saw the opportunity to continue producing and releasing albums and tracks from other renowned singers and groups such as Lula All Starts, Conjunto Lacalú, Lengaïa Salsa Brava, Salsotika, La Borinqueña and El Charangon del Norte led by Wilver Pedrozo.

Yani Borrell managed by Lula — Yani Borrell, one of the artists managed by Lula World Records

Why Lula World Records focuses on Latin Music

”We have centered our efforts on Latin music because of the relationship this project has with Lula Lounge, which opened its doors in 2022 with a concert by Isaac Delgado. From that point, the club has been remaining current for more than 20 years, time in which it has been the birthplace of new projects and emerging artists who have used the venue as a platform to develop and promote their music to local salsa fans,” Tracy said.

Among the many genres supported by Lula World Records all this time, we can mention salsa, Latin jazz, merengue, Cuban son, samba, bossa nova, reggae, classic tumbao, Latin-leaning funk, among many others. However, Tracy and his team are not limited to Latin genres, as they have also promoted Caribbean, Arab and European styles.

Something else Tracy said is that it is highly unlikely that the line followed by the label will change, since there are many migratory waves from Latin America that Canada continues to receive, so he knows that the Latin scene will keep growing in the coming years.

Charangon Del Norte managed by Lula — Multi-instrumentalist Wilver Pedrozo, leader of Charangon Del Norte, ne of the groups managed by Lula World Records

What Lula World Records looks for in an artist

As with any other music label, Lula World Records has its own requirements for managing an artist, Tracy explained that she and her team generally engage with artists who have made great strides in recording, mixing and mastering their own music.

During the evaluation process carried out by them, aspects such as the quality of the songs, excellence in production, catchiness of the tunes and the overall authenticity and originality of the project are taken into consideration.

The label has a particular interest in original and innovative mixes of diverse musical elements and used as an example an Afro-indigenous punk rock group of Brazilian origin called Xocô, which recently released one of its latest albums. Two other great examples of this diversity are Ahmed Moneka, the creator of Arabic and Afro-Iraqi jazz, and Nastasia, a Ukrainian soul singer.

Another detail they take into consideration is the artist’s ability to collaborate with them during the process of releasing their albums. Releasing a record production requires a lot of work from start to finish and a lot of things to do such as marketing and promotion of music. Lula World Records wants artists who fully live up to their commitment and use all the platforms and tools available to promote what they are doing.

To close the conversation, Tracy told us that any artist who want their musical work to be promoted can submit their EPK to the company for evaluation by the board of directors. They are still a small label, but hope to grow a lot more over the next two years and even manage artists outside of Canada.